


and when we burst, begin again

by owlvsdove



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-02
Updated: 2015-03-02
Packaged: 2018-03-16 01:37:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3469601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlvsdove/pseuds/owlvsdove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>May gets hurt in the line of duty. Jemma tries to fill her shoes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and when we burst, begin again

 

There is a day when the Cavalry does not ride in on a horse to save the day. There is a day when she doesn’t hold a gun in each hand and eliminate the threat. There is a day where she is not outnumbered, and she does not win against all odds.

And on that day, the day the Cavalry fails, it is Jemma Simmons who loses a piece of herself.

 

 

 

 

Jemma sits by her side. It’s her job; but it is also a lot more than that.

“You’re getting good at this,” Coulson says hoarsely. He is sitting on the other side of the bed. Every time she looks at him she has to look past May, crushed and mottled, sleeping and healing.

Jemma’s lips tremble. What a horrible thing to say. But it’s only horrible because it’s the truth. His eyes are as kind as ever. Tears are coming but her face doesn’t crumble into it. It is just happening to her. She is not participating.

She is good at this, he’s right. How many bedsides will she wait by? Skye, Fitz, May. Jemma’s fault. Jemma’s fault. Jemma’s fault.

“Every time we get our footing someone almost dies,” Jemma says quietly, clearly.

“Almost,” he emphasizes, but she’s shaking her head.

“Not good enough.”

He gives her a look, like his heart has cracked open over his face. “You sound like her.”

And that’s what does her in. Bile rises, in her throat and in her mind. She presses the back of her hand to her mouth, twists in her chair, about to flee. It’s too much. She sobs. It’s too much to handle. To have him looking at her fondly while May lies there silently. Jemma’s fault. It’s too much. She flees.

She flees.

 

 

 

 

If you ask May if the mission was a success, she will look you in the eye and say _yes._ Everyone left with their lives, and the situation was handled. Every member of her team is safe and healthy.

If you ask May, they came out on top.

But you can’t ask May.

 

 

 

 

Not yet.

 

 

 

 

Jemma finds Coulson later.

“I’m not her.”

He nods. He sees his mistake. “You’re not meant to be her.”

But somewhere inside her, Jemma knows that’s not true anymore. There was a sureness, one Jemma didn’t even truly register, that May brought to each of them. And it’s gone now. Every step is shaky. Coulson is wavering without his support, too distracted by stress to make a move. Skye is angry at the wind. Fitz is insecure and Trip is scared and Bobbi is grave and Lance is lost. May is the hand on their backs, but the grip has gone slack for the moment.

Jemma can’t sit by her bedside anymore.

Jemma has to be May.

This isn’t an apology. This is a warning.

 

 

 

 

Okay, Jemma still sits at her bedside. She couldn’t really stop anyway. But there is a change in her, and she’s making plans, synapses sparking, when Natasha finds her.

She’s leaning in the doorway when Jemma looks up finally.

“Agent Romanoff.”

“You know I’m not an agent, anymore,” Nat says, slight smile on her face.

“Coulson’s just left. I can get him if you—?”

“No, that’s okay. I’ve been waiting for him to take a break. I don’t need a lecture on how my civic duty is unfulfilled.”

“Civic duty,” Jemma scoffs a bit, meandering. “It’s not even your country.”

“It’s not yours either,” Nat says.

Jemma just shrugs.

Natasha pushes off the door and saunters into the room, taking Coulson’s seat across from her. If she’s disturbed by the state of Melinda May, she’s hidden it. Or grown accustomed to it in the time it took Jemma to look up. However real agents become impenetrable.

Nat swallows, gazing over May.

“You know how you thought she was unbreakable?”

Yes. She seemed as constant as the ground.

“Yes,” Jemma says quietly.

“She still is.”

Jemma’s eyes flick up to hers in surprise. “Is she?” she murmurs.

“Yeah,” Nat says, awed but sure. “She’s still here. This is the May version of taking a vacation.”

Jemma smiles half a smile, because half of her believes Natasha – out of sheer willpower, maybe, but belief it is – and half of her knows Natasha is just as hurt as the rest of them.

“You know what you have to do, Simmons,” Nat says. Last name, because these are marching orders. Because no one but Nat can suck it up and give any.

Jemma nods.

“Go on, then.”

Jemma gets up to leave, but the woman speaks once more.

“You know, I’ve seen her worse than this,” Nat murmurs.

“Really?”

“There are different kinds of injuries,” she responds. It’s cryptic, or it would have been to Jemma when she first started. It makes a lot of sense now. Since the pod, since HYDRA, a lot of Ops things are making sense.

“And?”

“And this one’s a scratch. Trust me.”

Jemma nods once, soldiers on.

 

 

 

 

Skye is sitting because Fitz is sitting; and there’s a gap between them like they’re waiting for her. She fills her space and leans her head on Fitz’s shoulder, because they’re still having problems and he needs a lot of reassurance.

“Eat something,” he says, blunt in a new way.

“Nah, I can’t.”

“You really need to.”

“I really can’t eat, I just can’t right now,” she says, rubbing her eyes.

He lets it rest.

“Has anything changed?” Skye asked, voice dipping under the weight of her hope, quick appearing and just as quick disappearing.

“No,” she murmurs.

Skye sighs.

“We can’t just sit here,” Jemma starts.

“I honestly don’t know what to do,” Skye says.

“May doesn’t want us to sit here and wait for her. She wants us to go back to work – you _know_ that’s what she wants.” Jemma is saying it, but of course Jemma doesn’t want to say it. She struggles to hold on to the sunniness that is expected of her. Still, they look marginally more comforted.

“I’ll just feel better when she wakes up.”

“We all will,” Jemma agrees. “But you know what you have to do.” She laces fingers with Skye, and Skye gives a look lush with gratitude.

“By the way,” Jemma continues casually, “Widow is here, watching May. You could probably get a spar in before she disappears into the night.”

Skye’s eyes widen comically, just as planned, and she bounces off the couch to kiss the side of Jemma’s head. She does Fitz too before stalking eagerly toward the med bay. Skye’s been needing a fight, rage welling. She can’t put it into the earth without starting a disaster, so she used to wring out the urge under May’s watchful eye. Nat can do just as well, now.

One fire turned low for the moment. Jemma turns her eye to Fitz, lifting her head from his shoulder.

“When was the last time you slept?”

He shrugs. “I don’t if you and Skye don’t.”

“Well, that’s rubbish. Do you know how many times you’ve dropped out of consciousness and we’ve snuck out for a pint?”

“Liar.”

“Am not.”

“I’m not gonna argue with you.”

“Well, that’s a bloody change,” she scoffs. It feels good when they’re able to bounce back and forth. Like they haven’t lost anything at all. They sit in the moment as long as they can.

“It’s nearly midnight,” she says after a long while. “Come to bed.”

“Skye?”

“She needs some time. She’ll come.”

He nods, takes her offered hand and follows.

 

 

 

 

Lance and Mack and Bobbi were like the transplant of an organ they didn’t know they needed. They are huddled in the lounge, whispering, drawn together in familial closeness as they grapple with uncertainty.

“Any news?” Bobbi asks, noting Jemma’s presence first.

“We’re going to wake her tomorrow morning,” she replies.

“That’s good, right?” Lance says.

Jemma nods. “We’ll all feel better tomorrow,” she says. The three of them nod solemnly in agreement. “But in the meantime…”

Lance raises his eyebrows.

“Lance, I need you to go through the payoff from the last mission and figure out if anything’s useable. Mack, you can check the quinjet for damage. I know there’s a bit of internal wiring that’s busted, so you can grab Fitz if you like. And Bobbi, I need you to go over the intel Skye lifted off the Periscope servers and work on a strategy for combatting the next attack.”

The three of them stare at her. They gift her looks she refuses to read, because she knows what they say already. She stays steady. She stays constant. She returns everything with blank direction.

Mack is the kindest. “You got it,” he says, breaking away from the trio to do as he was asked.

“I’ll find Skye and Trip,” Bobbi says quietly, taking her leave as well.

Lance looks at her. Of course Lance is going to be the asshole who cares. “You alright?”

She stays blank. “Fine. We just need to get to work.”

And she leaves before he can dig in any further.

 

 

 

 

That night, Coulson meanders into May’s room, hands in his pockets thoughtfully.

“I went to ask Lance to go through the cargo and he said he’d already done it.”

Jemma opens her mouth but doesn’t make a sound, looking down.

“Thanks for taking care of it,” he says. He sounds lost and humble and scared. But mostly thankful.

She gives him a quick nod as an answer, and if his concerned gaze lingers on her troublingly, she does her best to ignore it.

 

 

 

 

May follows orders, so when the doctors, with Jemma’s assistance, lift her induced coma, she wakes.

There are too many people in this room, but Jemma can’t find her voice to make them leave. Her vocal cords are tied in knots, yanking all the way down to her chest as she swallows. May can’t speak yet, because there’s a tube down her throat; and even if there wasn’t she probably won’t stay awake for very long. But her eyes flit over everyone. They linger on Coulson, on Skye, but they land on her. Jemma watches as somewhere in her brain May accepts what has happened as she falls back into dark unconsciousness.

Jemma has to excuse herself again.

 

 

 

 

Now that May’s awake, she’s been avoiding the room. Only going in to check on her when she’s certain May’s asleep. But somehow she got switched around during the mission they’re working on, and she walks in with Coulson at her bedside; and it takes a single knowing look from him to realize that she’s been played.

“May says she doesn’t remember what happened.”

“I can speak for myself, Phil,” May says. She’s rolling her eyes. At least that’s back to normal.

Jemma approaches her other side slowly, so May talks again. “I don’t remember what happened.”

“In all the chaos we didn’t really get a chance to debrief,” Coulson says carefully.

Jemma doesn’t want to do this part. May’s hand, IV attached to her first finger, is lying there empty next to her. Jemma doesn’t want to go over this again.

It’s not fair to keep May in the dark. It’s not fair.

“It’s my fault,” Jemma says first. She continues so they can’t say anything to contradict or balm her. “I thought I could go into the compound by myself, even though it was collapsing. I thought I can handle it. You ran in after me. We would’ve gotten back out in time but I was asking questions and you turned back to answer me and—”

“The ceiling caved in,” Coulson finished.

Jemma doesn’t have to nod. It’s a fact.

She has turned herself off. If she stays still and doesn’t meet any eyes, if she dims her brightness and dulls her actions, she can get through this. She can get through this without completely unraveling.

She learned a lot from the last time this happened. And the time before.

“None of this is your fault, Simmons,” May says, but she’s rasping now, breathing hard.

“You should sleep,” Jemma says. And she turns and leaves. Automatons care without leaving pieces of their hearts in other people.

 

 

 

 

Six different people try to trick her into going back to May. (You can guess who those six are.) But she dodges it as only May could have taught her, with brusqueness and silent stares, and she avoids the thing all together.

May certainly knows how to kick up a fuss when she wants to – a true agent from the Carter era, angry yet polished, industrious and resourceful to a fault. In Jemma’s imagination it goes a bit like this:

She rips out her IV without a twitch of pain crumpling her face and crouches gracefully out of bed to army crawl neatly to the nearest wheelchair, at which point she wheeled herself stealthily around the base to corner Jemma when she’s at her most vulnerable.

Or Coulson helped her out of bed. Either one.

Regardless, she corners Jemma moments after Lance has left her, retiring from their semi-regular nightcap.

Jemma sighs, going still.

“Don't do that,” May says, and she moves the glass away from Jemma's hand. “Look at me.”

Jemma does as she's told. It's hard. It hurts more than it should. Guilt stings and laves and stings again.

“This was not your fault, Jemma. This was chance.”

“You wouldn't have even been in there if it wasn't for me.”

“You don't know that.” May tries to keep her eyes. “What about the multiverse?”

Jemma almost smiles. “Science doesn't change how this feels.”

“Two years ago nothing would have prompted you to say those words.”

Her mouth bunches. “I've changed a lot, I know that.”

“But some things stay the same. You're always going to want to help. I'm always going to chase after you. We're always going to get hurt. It's part of the job.”

_We_ , she said. _We're always going to get hurt._

It's supposed to be making her feel better. But May doesn't know that she's charging forward. Jemma will have to show her at some point; she'll notice when things get back to normal. But for now, Jemma just nods and wheels May back to her room, making too much of a fuss because that's what she does.

 

 

 

 

May’s going to be out of the field for a while – she has to heal, and then she needs physical therapy, and then she needs the doctors to sign off on her. But after a while Coulson starts wheeling her out to the briefing room to talk strategy. In the meantime, Trip and Bobbi run point.

Trip’s seen Jemma though, pacing late at night. He always seems to know without her having to say a word.

“Simmons is taking point on this,” he says, passing it off. The axis of the earth shifts, but nobody dares contradict him.

Jemma goes through the tactical breakdown for the op and tries to ignore the eyes on her. When she’s finished, she steps down, staunchly avoiding May’s gaze.

When Coulson starts to speak, though, he doesn’t seem all that surprised. “That sounds like the best course of action,” he says. Approval. A heatwave through her chest, knocking down doubt with a single punch. She nods.

This is on her.

 

 

 

 

One would think, faced with this sort of tragedy, that Jemma Simmons would be inclined to shy away from responsibility. But she has things to prove.

Jemma will fake confidence. Jemma will lie. Jemma will steal wisdom if it helps them survive.

Jemma will not make these mistakes again.

 

 

 

 

It’s time for her to check up on May, but Jemma can hear voices like ghosts down the hall, so she pauses.

“You’re all working against me on this,” May bites. She sounds frustrated.

“This isn’t a plot, Melinda,” Coulson says. He sounds rather condescending to Jemma’s ears, but— “Simmons is capable all on her own.” He’s sticking up for her.

“Don’t you dare tell me that like I haven’t been the one convincing you to—”

Jemma creeps forward to peek.

“I know that. She’s yours. But the guilt she’s feeling right now isn’t going to be washed away with words; you know that better than anyone.”

May looks away from him. “She needs to do work,” May says quietly.

“She wants to be just like you,” he says. “And she is.”

The expression on May’s face isn’t exactly a proud one.

“You didn’t see her,” Phil says, “when you were under.”

May seems to understand. She was there for Fitz. She was there for Skye. “I know. I’m sorry that had to happen.”

“Not as sorry as she is,” he counters, with a long look. 

Jemma turns on her heel, closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath.

Then she spins back around and walks through the door. A soldier.

 

 

 

 

The operation isn’t particularly tricky; Jemma’s learned a lot from pure observation, which is her forte as a scientist. She’s a trained sponge. The universe just wrung her out on the floor, spouting words like _tac teams_ and _spare rounds_ and _cover the exits._ They corner their mark on Jemma’s command, Coulson close behind. They get their man. No one gets hurt.

No one gets hurt.

 

 

 

 

This time.

 

 

 

 

“Hey,” her voice, sharp and hiding something, calls Jemma. She turns to look. “You want to learn something new?”

It’s classic Jemma Simmons bait.

She follows May as she rolls down to the garage, past Fitz and Mack who watch them go with interest. Up the ramp of the jet and over to the cockpit. May uses her arms to swing herself into the pilot’s chair roughly, not looking to Jemma for help for a moment. She nods for Jemma to sit in as the co-pilot.

May goes through the normal pre-flight checks, radios Trip to let him know they’re going out and leads them up for takeoff. And Jemma just sits and watches. There’s something so relaxing about how methodical this is, watching May’s hands move and push and flick and turn, preparing them for something so genius it might as well be impossible. And the air – the sky is so clear and open and there’s nothing in their way except water vapor and running out of gas.

Jemma’s quite a fan of the copilot’s seat.

“You see this? Airspeed indicator,” May points. “Self-explanatory. Altimeter. Turn coordinator, which orients you while turning. Heading indicator, which is a glorified compass. Ignore that one. Artificial horizon, here…”

May keeps talking for a long while, explaining as she goes along in a patient voice. Jemma knows some of this already, some of it is new, but all of it is important, she can feel it. She just doesn’t know why yet.

May flips a switch and then looks at her. “Take the control yoke.”

Jemma’s eyes widen, but she doesn’t dare speak to contradict her, wrapping her hands around the yoke quickly.

“Keep us in the air, Simmons,” May says quietly.

Jemma knows May can take over if she fucks up. She knows this. But she doesn’t use it. She just focuses on keeping them in the air.

May starts to slowly speak, but Jemma keeps watching the horizon line:

“There is not a single thing you can do to stop things from going wrong. You can try hiding from tragedy, but it won’t last. You just have to pick yourself up.”

Her vision is clear and bright and blue.

May looks at her, Jemma can tell out of the corner of her eye. “I believe you can keep us in the air.”

So she does.

 


End file.
